I always click on the saddest, most horrible articles in the New York Times online. Yesterday, I read about a study finding that parents who lose a child have an increased risk of heart attacks. The idea being that heartbreak actually breaks your heart. I read most of the comments, too. The most pertinent one was, “No kidding.”

The saddest one, the one I most identified with was this, from a mother:

I have never been the same. My broken heart was only part of the casualty. A shadow appearing as myself has been going about the Sisyphean task called life.

Yes, that’s a perfect summation. I am here but not here. That’s just the way it is.

I dutifully read the bleak, sappy, distressing and sometimes clueless comments and was finally rewarded by a guy who pointed out that the African dik-dik dies of heartbreak after a partner passes away. I pictured a noble tribe of nomadic herders, swathed in beads and kente cloth and dropping dead in their paths.

But the dik-dik is a tiny species of antelope, reaching only around 12 to 16 inches high!  Unlike other antelope, who live in herds, the dik-dik live in pairs. They are monogamous partners for life, and so protective of their privacy that they chase away their own offspring before they reach 8 months old.

The dik-dik are not only cute, with wiggly noses and long eyelashes, but obviously incurable romantics! Without the defenses of a herd, they are easy prey for larger animals, but they are true to their nature, trusting and depending on each other for everything.

And here is the best part: Instead of marking their territory with urine, like most animals, the dik-dik mark their territories with tears.

dik-dik bury their heads into the grass and release a special tear from a black spot below their eyes. This sticky preorbital glandular fluid cannot be smelled by human nostrils but conveys everything necessary to other dik-dik.

I love them so much. A world with dik-dik in it can’t be dismissed as all bad. It’s mostly bad, but like the dictum, focus on the dopeness, not the wackness, I’m going to focus on the dik-dik, and so should you.

A zoo in Antwerp has asked a woman to stop visiting the chimpanzee she claims to be in love with, in the hope of forcing the chimp to engage with his own species.

Alice Timmermans has been seeing, I mean visiting, the chimp for four years, standing outside his enclosure and exchanging air kisses with him. She says they are in a relationship, and who are we to argue with her? Zoo authorities say the relationship is turning the chimp into an outcast among his peers, who are starting to avoid him.

Alice has taken to social media to protest the zoo’s ban, insisting that the chimp loves her and characterizing their relationship as an affair. The 39 year old chimp has lived at the zoo for thirty years, after his owner surrendered him for “behavior issues.”

Listen, chimpanzees only have a lifespan of around 40 years. WHY CAN’T THEY LET HIM BE HAPPY??

Let him have a private enclosure where he and Alice can continue dating. They may be ready to take the relationship to the next level; it’s been four years, after all. Why this speciesism, Antwerp Zoo? Should we start a Move On petition for Alice and Chita the chimp?? Or a GoFundMe to pay for her to file a lawsuit? The heart wants what it fucking wants, don’t forget, as if we could.

Meanwhile, in Loango National Park, chimpanzees in the wild have started attacking gorillas, behavior that anthropologists have never seen before. Until now, interaction between the two species has been peaceful, even playful on occasion. But these chimps formed coalitions and attacked the gorillas, killing the infants who were separated from their mothers. Fuckers! What is their goddamn problem? Are they mad because they want affairs with attractive humans? Are they sick of being discussed in the media? Can’t we all get along??

Maybe we can.

A lion sanctuary in Harrismith, South Africa, is placing visitors inside Plexiglas cages stationed at the center of the lions’ lair, granting animal enthusiasts a palm-to-paw encounter with their menagerie of 77 rescued big cats.

Tourists are locked inside a “professional photography cage” for 45 minutes, paying around $150 for the chance to snap close-range pictures of the lions as they claw at the enclosure’s acrylic walls. The [cage] is regularly checked by an engineer to ensure it can safely carry the weight (up to 570 pounds) should a lion jump on top of it. And the round breathing holes in the plexiglass cage are “totally safe.”

Hahaha! Totally safe, famous last words.

Isn’t it too binary to have “people” and “animals”? Some people are barely human, and some animals are good people: witness my dog, Boris. Maybe we should reconsider who to fear and who to love.

Or maybe those lions should get together and crush that plastic cage, eat the tourists, and start dating chimps, but not the ones in Loango National Park. Those fuckers are way out of order.

Maybe you’ve had more than enough of the gorilla story. If so, I fault your limited imagination.

There is so much here! It’s a story so rich in metaphor and allegory and philosophical questions about parenthood, ethics, and humanity.

Just sticking to the facts, it is awful. Let me quote an essay in The Guardian by Ian Redmond:

Harambe is a KiSwahili word meaning “pull together” – a good name for a gorilla because gorillas live in stable family groups and they do look out for one another. Over the past 40 years I have had the good fortune to spend hundreds of hours in the company of gorillas in their natural habitat. Most of them were habituated – that is, used to, human observers with an understanding of gorilla etiquette – but misunderstandings sometimes occur. I have been charged by a nervous female who thought I was too close to a member of her group, a blackback (adolescent) male who I was filming feeding; I have been walloped and bowled over by boisterous blackbacks, treating me just like one of the family, and on occasion, been on the receiving end of defensive silverbacks giving their awe-inspiring screaming charge. But I’ve never been hurt by a gorilla.

Well, that makes me feel sad. This makes me feel sadder:

Clearly if a silverback wanted to kill a child, he could do so in an instant. But he didn’t. It would seem that the danger was more to do with whether the boy might bang his head on a rock while being dragged.

There were other possible outcomes. In two other incidents where children have fallen into zoo gorilla enclosures (Jersey in 1986 and Chicago in 1996) neither the gorillas nor the children died. It is cogent to examine the specifics of each case before drawing conclusions about this one.

Redmond suggests interventions other than killing the gorilla, like distracting him with his favorite food. And he doesn’t have a word of criticism for the boy’s mother.

Here’s a question though. Why didn’t the mother jump in to save her child? It was only a 15 foot drop. What’s her fucking problem? I haven’t been put to the test personally, and I have been stupid enough to take my eyes off my young children. But I have no doubt that I’d do more than stand there and yell, “Mommy’s here!”

On the other hand, how many random kids is one majestic gorilla worth?

I say random because I don’t include my own kids. Just being hypothetical here. An innocent gorilla, born into captivity with no choices at all. A member of an endangered species whose lifespan should be 35 to 40 years, killed because some bitch thinks the zoo is a playground for toddlers.

I don’t know what would satisfy my distress about the gorilla. I have seen a gorilla in captivity and even that is distressing beyond words.

Let’s move along into metaphor.

Are we not all gorillas in captivity? We’re stuck here, minding our own business, trying to make the most of our situations, and some happenstance that is not of our making comes along to freak us out or confuse us and no one asks us how we want to proceed.

Maybe some of us are zookeepers, acting in fear without empathy.

Or maybe we’re impulsive, selfish little kids, fucking shit up for others because we want a little thrill.

Or – and here I’m probably revealing too much – maybe we’re all stupid fat mothers who can’t protect our kids because we’re just not equipped for the job.

To support one of the charities helping protect gorillas in Africa visit www.4apes.com and click on gorilla. And visit Gorilla Doctors.

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Oh god, President Obama made a joke comparing his bowling ineptitude to the Special Olympics. Big deal! Now we have to hear everyone talking shit about it, not only people like Mrs. Palin but normal people, too!

This sanctimonious PC shit has gone too far. Disabled, challenged, whatever, but we need to be allowed to have a sense of humor! Mr. Obama was mocking himself, as his tone clearly indicated. People who compete in the Special Olympics can watch the interview and decide whether to feel insulted. Everyone else should just shut up.

There are so many things to get mad about, why must people always focus on the wrong things? Every time I’m near a TV, I hear someone yelling about AIG and executive bonuses. It’s caused an uproar unlike anything I’ve seen in years.

Big fucking deal about the bonuses, what about the fact that we’ve destroyed Iraq and caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people FOR NO REASON?! Where was all this righteous anger during the last seven years?!

Here’s something you can get mad about instead. According to the Associated Press, this man is accused of having sex with a dog and a horse.

I don’t like his expression, and I don’t like his do-it-yourself haircut. But I suspect this story is a hoax and here’s why: ” A 13-year-old girl said she saw Coppes with her Anatolian shepherd. Coppes is also charged with abusing the girl’s small Palomino horse.” The words Anatolian and Palomino are the tip-off, right? If it is a hoax, you heard it here first!

And going back to Mrs Palin, as one does, let us ponder this: Alaska is only now considering whether to make bestiality a crime. Good call, Alaska! While you’re at it, remember that aerial hunting isn’t nice either.

Cat Dancers is the name of a documentary now playing on HBO. It’s also the name of a show biz act consisting of Ron and Joy Holiday and their younger partner, Chuck Lizza. The three of them trained and worked with wild tigers in their act, which pre-dated Seigfried and Roy.

It is a mesmerizing documentary that challenges all sorts of assumptions. The director creates a bittersweet, surreal atmosphere as Ron recalls the excitement of his years on stage with his beloved wife and their exotic pets. When they meet Chuck, a lost young man who ran away to join the circus, he becomes their favorite pet, in a sense. Chuck becomes their lover, forming a romantic triangle that lasted harmoniously for 14 years.

In some respects, Cat Dancers recalls Grizzly Man in its portrait of well-meaning humans who refuse to believe in the boundary between them and the wild animals they love so deeply.

It’s a tragic story that lingers with you like a strange and vivid dream. I’m glad I saw it; It felt like a trip to Mars… a hallmark of a great documentary.

Still under the spell of Cat Dancers, I heard from my friend Romeo that he’d been on a wild pig hunt while visiting his family in Texas. I think it’s okay to kill a wild pig, but I’m not sure if the pig thinks so. Probably not, I’m guessing. Romeo’s email message brought forth a bunch of ads for Wild Boar Hunting. I clicked on one, a big mistake if you’re not turned on by images of fat guys grinning next to huge dead boars.

Then, I was intrigued by an ad for “ethical trophy hunting” in Namibia and Mozambique. Here, you can plan your “safari” where you are guaranteed to get the “trophies” (i.e. dead animals) you want, but by “fair chase only!”

Here is some bastard with his Ethical Trophy!

If Romeo wants a dead pig, by god he deserves it. He just got through a stint in the US Military Forces, protecting us from terrorists. That guy in the photo above, though, is not worth fighting for. Fuck that punk. It’s almost, but not quite, enough to put me off wearing fur.